+++ press release TRANSFORMERS +++ UFO Belgrade +++

+++ PRESS INFO +++

PIRATED SPACES AND INFORMAL ARCHITECTURE
Opening 8. Oktober, 19:00
BIKINIHAUS in the City West
Budapester Stra 48 10787 Berlin

The first exhibition in the series TRANSFORMERS reveals diverse "readings"
of urban landscapes: Maria Papadimitriou's "Found Works" - images from the
Roma community in Menidi, on the outskirts of Athens, becomes a wry comment
on the focus of the international art market. Claudia Basrawi and Florian
Braun regard a psychogeographical encounter with the city as a means of
expressing a 'borderline' reality; a subjective gaze. Cro International's
investigations and questionnaires will evoke the setting of noticeboards as
it addresses participatory strategies and references situationist practices
in experiencing urban space.

Space is something to be taken and made one's own - if only for a while: the
architects Deadline and the artist Santiago Cirugeda show ways in which a
subtle choreography of situations applied to disused, or undervalued public
terrain bends the rules and deliberately tampers with the politics of city
spaces, making use of legal loopholes.

The architect Benjamin Foerster Baldenius with his mobile office
demonstrates strategies of engagement with the disaffected younger
generation of Halle Neustadt - an area facing chronic de-population and
unemployment - and reveals how to circumnavigate the countless rules that
govern building with his design of a family house built in a Berlin
allotment.

With "Spaces of Uncertainty" the architects Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen
have analysed the psychology of the in-between spaces of London, Berlin and
Brussels, and the ephemeral architecture which occupies such marginal urban
territories. An urban investigation that similarly embraces 'dirty realism'
rather than representational architecture is that of Pablo Leon de la Barra:
anonymous buildings of informal suburbs in Mexico City offer an overview of
a vernacular modernity.

A vernacular of a different kind - "left-over modern" within Berlin - has
caught the oblique gaze of Oliver Elser and Andreas Muhs: restmoderne.de is
a unique and unexpectedly popular - urban archive of architectural details,
both construction and ornament, of Berlin's hitherto disregarded buildings
of the 60's through to the 80's.

In two spatial interventions: Raumlabor and students of the BTU Cottbus with
>gocji< will devise a wilful architecture for the space as a social
attractor that demands attention, whilst 'wallpaperwall' (a
site-specificwork to be created by students of the Bartlett school of
Architecture)transforms architectural details into ornament in a
double-sided intervention.

Maria Papadimitriou: TAMA, Athens/ Santiago Cirugeda, Sevilla/ Kenny Cupers,
Markus Miessen: BERLINASIDE, Berlin, London/ Matthew Griffin, Britta
Jorgens: DEADLINE, Berlin/ Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius, Berlin/ Pablo Leon
de la Barra, Mexico, London/ Claudia Basrawi, Florian Braun, Berlin/ Oliver
Klimpel, BUERO INTERNATIONAL, London/ Markus Bader: Raumlabor, Berlin and
students of the BTU Cottbus/ Oliver Elser, Andreas Muhs: RESTMODERN.DE,
Berlin/ Ana Araujo, Willem de Bruijen, Evi Fotsi, Sophie Handler, Aslihan
Senel: students of the Bartlett School of Architecture, London

talk guests: Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert Klumpner, Caracas/ Stephan Lanz,
Hermann Hiller: cooperation of Ersatzstadt (Volksb=FChne Berlin) and COOPA
ROCA, Rio de Janeiro/ Marjetica Potrc, Ljubliana / Jan Wenzel, Anne Koenig:
1990ff, Leipzig/ Susanne Hofmann und die Baupiloten, TU Berlin/

Exhibition 9. - 26. Oktober 2003 Opening Hours Tuesday Saturday 14:00-19:00